The police have been issued with new and sophisticated guns to fight crime in the latest move to modernise the country’s security agencies.
Police spokesman Charles Owino says the government has put in a lot of money for police modernisation, mostly in technology and weaponry to the advantage of officers, especially in preventive and investigative capacities.
“The world is changing and therefore the need for law enforcement agencies to embrace the change and move with speed,” Owino says.
In as from February last year, police officers on patrol, at roadblocks and those guarding strategic buildings and institutions have been armed with either beige or black fold-able butt semi-automatic guns that are more convenient and practical either on crowded streets or rural areas.
Introduced in 2009, the CZ Scorpion EVO 3 A1 is a 9mm select fire variant, making it a semi-automatic sub-machine gun. It is a prototype of the Slovakian Laugo sub-machine gun.
Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) Special Forces has been the only African military unit to use the FN Herstal SCAH-CAL assault rifle.
Other units using the rifles include the US Navy seals, the Los Angeles Police Department’s SWAT, US Customs and Border Protection Officer of Air and Marine Interdiction Unit, US marines, South Korean Army 707th Special Mission Battalion, among others.
Compared to the FN SCAR, the G3 is cheap to produce, easy to maintain standard NATO 7.62 x 51mm ammunition rifle that employs the roller delayed blowback mechanism that was successful.
It is capable of semi-automatic and full automatic firing fed from a 20-round capacity magazine or 50-round drum magazine.
The AK 47 assault rifle is a celebrated gun developed in the Soviet Union in 1945 by Mikhail Kalashnikov. Seventy years later, the rifle continues to be the most popular and used gun around the world even under harsh conditions with little maintenance. It has been the weapon of choice for militaries, insurgents and rebels alike.
The government has spent billions of shillings in the latest acquisition of over 50,000 rifles for the over 120,000 police officers.
The new acquisition will include spare parts for the new rifles, training the officers in gun-handling and attachments that the older guns did not have.
There are questions on where the old G3, MP5 and AK 47 rifles will be disposed of, considering that unlike in the developed world where the legal uptake of guns is high, the Kenyan scenario is restricted.
Ordinarily, guns demilitarised from fully automatic and semi-automatic to single fire are released on the market, but this can’t be done in Kenya.